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A33439
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Poems by J.C. ; with additions.; Poems. Selections
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Cleveland, John, 1613-1658.
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1651
(1651)
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Wing C4684; ESTC R171391
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34,856
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98
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From them th' Almanack lies Frost Pond and Rivers clean Never did c. THE CHARACTER OF A London-Diurnall A Diurnall is a puny Chronicle scarce pin-feather'd with the wings of time It is an History in Sippets the English Iliads in a Nut-shell the Apocryphal Parliaments book of Maccabees in single sheets It would tire a Welch pedigree to reckon how many aps 't is remov'd from an Annall For it is of that Extract only of the younger House like a Shrimp to a Lobster The originall sinner in this kind was Dutch Galliobelgicus the Protoplast and the modern Mercuries but Hans-en-Kelders The Countesse of Zealand was brought to bed of an Almanack as many Children as daies in the year It may be the Legislative Lady is of that Linage so she spawns the Diurnals and they at Westminster take them in Adoption by the names of Scoticus Civicus Britanicus In the Frontispice of the old Beldame-Diurnall like the Contents of the Chapter sits the House Commons judging the twelve Tribes of Israel You may call them the Kingdoms Anatomy before the weekly Kalender For such is a Diurnall the day of the moneth with what weather in the Commonwealth 'T is taken for the pulse of the Body politike and the Emperick Divines of the Assembly those spirituall Dragooneâ—s thumb it accordingly Indeed it is a pretty Synopsis and those grave Rabbies though in point of Divinity trade in no larger Authors The country-Carrier when he buyes it for the Vicar miscalls it the Vrinall yet properly enough for it casts the water of the State ever since it staled blood It differs from an Aulicus as the Devill and his Exorcist or as a black Witch doth from a white one whose office is to unravell her inchantments It begins usually with an Ordinance which is a Law still-born dropt before quickned by the Royall Assent 'T is one of the Parliaments by-blowes Acts being legitimate hath no more Syre then a Spanish Gennet that 's begotten by the wind Thus their Militia like its patron Mars is the issue only of the mother without the concourse of Royall Iupiter Yet Law it is if they vote it though in defiance of their Fundamentalls like the old Sexton who swore his Clock went true what ever the Sun said to the contrary The next Ingredient of a Diurnall is plots horrible plots which with wonderfull sagacity it hunts dry-foot while they are yet in their Causes before Materia prima can put on her smock How many such fits of the mother have troubled the Kingdoms and for all Sir Walter Erle looks like a Man-Midwife not yet delivered of so much as a cushion But Actors must have their Properties And since the Stages were voted down the onely Play-house is at Westminster Sutable to their plots are their Informers Skippers and Tailors Spaniells both for the Land and the Water Good conscionable Intelligence For however Pym's Bill may inflame the reckoning the honest Vermine have not so much for lying as the publike Faith Thus a zealous Botcher in Morefields while he was contriving some Quirpo-cut of Church-Government by the help of his out-lying Eares and the Otâ—cousticon of the Spirit discovered such a plot that Selden intends to combate Antiquity and maintain it was a Taylors Goose that preserved the Capitol I wonder my Lord of Canterbury is not once more all-to-betraytor'd for dealing with the Lions to settle the Commission of Array in the Tower It would do well to cramp the Articles Dormant besides the opportunity of reforming those Beasts of the Prerogative and changing their prophaner names of Harry and Charles into Nehemiah and Eleazer Suppose a Corn-cutter being to give little Isaac a cast of his Office should fall to paring his Brows mistaking the one end for the other because he branches at both This would be a plot and the next Diurnall would furnish you with this Scale of Votes Resolved upon the Question that this Act of the Corn-cutters was an absolute Invasion of the Cities Charter in the representative Forehead of Isaac Resolved that the evill Councellours about the Corn-cutter are Popishly affected and Enemies to the State Resolved that there be a publique Thanksgiving for the great deliverance of Isaac's Brow-antlers and a solemn Covenant drawn up to defie the Corn-cutter and all his works Thus the Quixots of this Age fight with the Windmills of their own heads quell Monsters of their own creation make plots and then discover them as who fitter to unkennell the Fox then the Tarryer that is a part of him In the third place march their Adventures the Roundheads Legend the Rebells Romance stories of a larger size then the Ears of their Sect able to strangle the belief of a Soli-fidian I 'le present them in their Order and first as a Whiffller before the show enter Stamford one that trod the Stage with the first travers'd his ground made a leg and Exit The Countrey-people took him for one that by Order of the Houses was to dance a Morice through the West of England Well hee 's a nimble Gentleman set him but upon Banks his Horse in a saddle Rampant and it is a great question which part of the Centaur shews better tricks There was a Vote passing to translate him with all his Equipage into Monumentall-Ginger-bread but it was cross'd by the Female-Committee alledging that the Valour of his Image would bite their children by the tongues This Cubit and an half of Commander by the help of a Diurnall routed his enemies fifty miles off 't is strange you 'l say and yet it is generally believed he would as soon do it at that distance as nearer hand Sure it was his sword for which the weapon salve was invented that so wounding and healing like loving Correlates might both work at the same removes But the Squib is run to the end of the Rope Room for the Prodigy of Valour Madam Atropos in breeches Wallers Knight-errantry and because every Mountibank must have his Zany throw him in Haslerigge to set off his story these two like Bel and the Dragon are alwaies worshipped in the same Chapter they hunt in their Couples what one doth at the head the other scores up at the heel Thus they kill a man over and over as Hopkins and Sternhold murder the Psalms with another to the same one chimes all in and then the other strikes up as the Saints-bell I wonder for how many lives my Lord Hoptons soul took the Lease of his body First Stamford slew him then Waller out-killed that half a Bar and yet it is thought the sullen corps would scarce bleed were both these Man-slayers never so near it The fame goes of a Dutch-Heads-man that he would do his office with so much ease and dexterity that the Head after execution should stand stil upon the shoulders pray God Sir William be not Probationer for the place For as if he had the like kanck too most of those whom the Diurnal hath slain for
the same linnage with accumulative treason for his office it is the resurrection of the Ileptarchy or England fritters it is the broken meat of a Crumbling Prince onely the Royalty is greater for it is here as in the miracle of Loaves the voyder exceeds the Bill of fare the Pope and he rings the Changes here is a plurality of Crowns to one head joyne them together and ther 's harmony in discord the tripple crowned Turn-Key of Heaven with the tripple headed porter of hell A Committee-man is the reliques of Regal Government but like holy reliques he out-bulks the substance whereof he is a remnant ther 's a score of Kings in a Committee as in the reliques of the Crosse ther 's the number of twenty This is the Gyant with the hundred hands that weilds the Scepter the tyrannical Beade-Roule by which the Kingdome prays backward and with a kind of Rebus at every Curse drops a Committee-man Let CHARLES be wayved whose conducing clemency aggravates the desection and make Nero the question better a Nero then a Committee Ther 's lesse execution by a single bullet then by case-shot Now a Committee-man is a party coloured Officer he must be drawn like Ianus with Cross and Pile in his countenance as he relates to the Souldiers or face about to his fleecing the Country look upon him Martially and he is a Justice of War one that hath bound his Dalton up in Buff and will needs be of the quorum to the best Commanders he is one of Mars his Lay-Elders he shares in the Government though a Non-conformist to his bleeding Rubick he is the like Sectary in Arms as the Platonick is in love keep a flattering in discourse but proves haggard in the action he is not of the Souldiers and yet of his flock it is an Emblem of the golden age and such indeed he makes it to him when so tame a Pigeon may commerce with Vulters Me thinks a Committee hanging about a Governour and Bandiliers dangling about a furd Alderman have an Anagrame resemblance ther 's no Syntax between a Cap of maintenance and a helmet who ever knew an Enemy routed by a Grand-Jury and a billa vera It is a left-handed Garrison where their authority perches but the more preposterous the more in fashion the right-hand fights while the left rules the Reines the Truth is the Souldier and the Gentlemen are like Don-Quicchott and Sancho Pancha one fights at all adventures to purchase the other the Government of the Island A Committee-man properly should be the Governour 's Matrosse to fit his truckle and to new-string him with sinnews of War for his chief use to raise assessements in the neighbouring Wapentake The Country-people being like an Irish Cow that will not give down her milke unless she see her Calf before her Hence it is he is the Garrisons dry Nurse he chews their contribution before he feeds them so the poor Souldiers live like Trochilus by picking the teeth of this sated Crocodile So much for his warlike or ammunition face which is so preternatural that it is rather a vizard then a face Mars in him hath but a blinking aspect his face of Arms is like his Coate partie per pale Souldier and Gentleman much of a scantling Now enter his Taxing and deglubing face a squeezing look like that of Vespasianus as if he were breeding over a close-stoole Take him thus and he is the Inquisition of the purse an Authentick Gypsie that nips your bung with a canting Ordinance not a murthered fortune in all the Country but bleeds at the touch of this Malefactor He is the spleen of the body politick that swels it self to the Consumption of the whole at at first indeed he ferretted for the Parliament but since be hath got off his Cope he set up for himself he lives upon the sins of the people and that 's a good standing-dish too he verifies the Axiom Eisdem nutriter ex quibus componiter his dyet it suitable to his constitution I have wondered often why the plundered Country-men should repair to him for succor certainly it is under the same notion as one whose pockets are pickt goes to Mol-Cutpurse as the predominant in that faculty He out-dives a Dutch-man gets a noble of him that was never worth six pence for the poorest escape not but Dutch-like he will be dreyning even in the driest ground he Aliens a Delinquents Estate with as little remorse as his other holiness gives away an Hereticks Kingdome and for the truth of the Delinquency both Chapmen have as little share of Infallability Lye is the Grand Sallad of Arbitrary Government Executor to the Star-Chamber and High-Commission for those Courts are not extinct they survive in him like Dollary changed into single moneys To speak the truth he 's the universal tribunal For since these times all causes fall to his Cognizance as in a great infection all diseases oft turn to the Plague It concerns our Masters the Parliament to look about them if he proceeds at this rate the Jack may come to swallow the Pike as the Interest often eats out the Principal As his commands are great so he looks for a reverence accordingly He is very punctual in exacting your hat and to say right it is his due but by the same title as the upper garment is the vails of the executioners There was a time when such cattle would have hardly been taken upon suspicion for men in office unless the old Poverb were renewed that beggers make a free Company and those their Wardens You may see what it is to hang together look upon them severally and you cannot but fumble for some thrids of charity But oh they are Tarmagants in conjunction like Fidlers who are rogues when they go single and joyned in consort gentlemen Musitioners I care not much if I untwist my Committee-man and so give him the receipt of this grand Catholican Take a State Martyr one that for his good behaviour hath paid the excise of his ears so suffered Captivity by the Land-Piracy of Ship-money next a Primitive freeholder One that hates the King because he is a Gentleman transgressing the Magna Charta of delving Adam Adde to these a mortified Bankerupt that helps out his false Weights with some scruples of Conscience and with his peremptory scales can doome his Prince with a Mene tecall These with a new blew-stocking'd Justice lately made of a good basket-hilted Yeoman with a short-handed Clerk tack't to the Reare of him to carry the Knapsack of his understanding together with two or three Equivocal Sirs whose Religion like their Gentility is the Extract of their Acres being therefore spiritual because they are earthly not forgetting the man of the Law whose corruption gives the Hogan to the sincere Juncto These are the simples of this pretious Compound a kinde of Dutch hotch-potch the Hogan Mogan Committee-man A Committee-man hath a Side-man or rather a setter height a Sequestrator of whom you may say as of the great Sultans horse Where he treads the grass growes no more He is the States Cormorant one that fishes for the Publique but feeds himself the misery is he fishes without the Cormorants property a rope to strengthen the gullet and to make him disgorge A Sequestrator He is the Devils Nuthooke the signe with him is alwaies in the clutches Ther 's more Monsters retaine to him then to all the limbs in Anatomie 'T is strange Physitians do not apply him to the soles of the feet in a desparate Feaver he draws far beyond Pigeons I hope some Mountebank will slice him and make the Experiment He is a Tooth-drawer once removed here 's all the difference one applauds the Grinder and the other the Grist Never till now could I verifie the Poets description that the ravenous Harpie had a humane visage Death it selfe cannot quit scores with him Like the Demoniack in the Gospel he lives among Tombes nor is all the holy-water shed by Widdows and Orphans a sufficient Exorcism to dispossess him Thus the Cat sucks your breath and the Fiend your blood Nor can the Brotherhood of Witchfinders so sagely instituted with all their terrour wean the Familiars But once more to single out my imbost Committee-man his Fate for I know you would fain see an end of him is either a whipping Audit when he is wrung in the withers by a Committee of Examinations and so the spunge weeps out the moisture which he soaked before Or else he meets his passing peale in the clamorous mutiny of a gut-foundred Garrison For the Hedge-sparrow will be feeding the Cuckow till he mistakes his Commons and bite off her head Whatever 't is it is within his desert for what is observed of some Creatures that at the same time they trade in productions three stories high suckling the first big with the second and cliketing for the third A Committee-man is the Counterpoint his mischief's superfetation a certain scale of destruction For he ruines the Father beggars the Son and strangles the hopes of all posterity FINIS